The Very Large Telescope Interferometer

The Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) consists in the coherent combination of the four VLT Unit Telescopes or the four moveable 1.8m Auxiliary Telescopes. The VLTI provides milli-arcsec angular resolution at low and intermediate (R=12000) spectral resolution at near infrared wavelengths.

General Description

The four 8.2-m Unit Telescopes (UTs) and the four 1.8-m Auxiliary Telescopes (ATs) are the light collecting elements of the VLTI. The UTs are set on fixed locations while the ATs can be relocated on 30 different stations. The light can be re-combined for either three (triplet) or four (quadruplet) telescopes depending on the beam-combining instrument. After the light beams have passed through a complex system of mirrors and the light paths have been equalized by the delay line system, the light re-combination is performed by the near infrared instruments AMBER or PIONIER.

Due to its characteristics, the VLTI has become a very attractive means for scientific research on various objects like young pre-main sequence stars and their protoplanetary disks, post-main sequence mass-losing stars, binary objects and their orbits, solar system asteroids, and extragalactic objects such as active galactic nuclei.